Kim Possible Dénouement
by Absentialuci
Summary: Heroes need not speak, for when they are gone, it is the world that will speak for them." One shot.


KIM POSSIBLE, RON STOPPABLE AND OTHERS ARE THE PROPERTY OF DISNEY AND THEIR RESPECTIVE ARTISTS

_Remember, Caesar. Thou art mortal._

I.

There is a person who transcends her own existence.  
A woman who exemplifies the very meaning of her creed.  
Brutal but merciful, quick, yet powerful, strong yet graceful—calculating but with a slashingly limitless imagination.  
She is everything that her people strive to be. And She is better.  
The ultimate quintessence of martial perfection, She is a woman, but far more—indeed, She is Woman. She is not flawless—She has taken the realm of ability to a new level, and what was once Flaw becomes Feature, what was once efficient became beautiful.  
She is a legend in her own time.  
And every mind in her culture, her own including, believes in one thing if they believe at all. They believe She can do anything, even defy her own end .

But they are wrong.

II.

She leapt forward, and rolled.  
As She fell through the air, a sound reached her, touching off an automatic reaction She was aware of only after it had happened; before She hit the ground, She snapped her arms up, caught her weight, and _pushed_—hurled herself into a flip that carried her through ten feet of air.  
She apexed and was beginning her descent by the time the streak of plasma scored the ground below her, a direct hit on where She had been.  
But they were too slow, of course,  
Landing with a sideways tumble, She came up facing backwards. The weapon that was suddenly in her hand gutted the henchman before he could see more than a blue-on-white blur.  
Her own senses, augmented by the suit's sensors, made it almost unfair; the enemy that was creeping from behind her would have done better to attempt to ambush a sun.  
Kicking the wall beside her at the same time She dropped her shields to increase her traction, She spun herself through the air, pin wheeled, and landed on the henchman's shoulders. She let her weight go, described an arc to the ground, and, with the man's head held between her legs, catapulted him against the wall.  
The Cheerleader-turned-hero rocked to her feet, twisted her rifle off her shoulders, and with one motion slammed the side of it into the man's skull. There was a sickening crunch.  
The impact activated the weapon's built-in light.  
She shoved away from the dead man so hard that She fell backwards. The rifle's ion illuminator, suddenly bright in the dim corridor, spotlighted the man that had been approaching from behind. The henchman instinctively covered his eyes.  
Half a second later, the woman flew five feet from a prone start and landed a blow so heavy that it penetrated clear to the other side of the man's body.  
She left her _Erinyes_-armored fist impaled, holding the red-attired henchman upright; with her other hand, She tossed the rifle over his head, caught it behind, and with a sharp tug, pulled as hard as She could. The long weapon spun against the man's head and lanced twenty feet through the air, light whirling around the walls wildly, to smash into the last henchman and kill him instantly.  
Slowly withdrawing her blood-soaked arm, the woman known as Kim Possible let the body of everything She fought against fall to the hard, polished ground.

She ran.  
Cresting the corner of the coiling passageway, the path opened up before her straight and true; a hundred meters of open space.  
Lowering her head, She began to accelerate. Twenty, twenty-five, thirty miles an hour. Forty. She was a blur against the unlit corridor. Forty-five.  
She was still accelerating when the throughway ended. Unable to stop, She leapt forward and planted both of her legs squarely into the flat wall of the ninety-degree turn. A quick mental command locked the knee joints of her battle suit.  
There was a deafening _clang_ as She impacted, and She felt the effect ripple through her body. She shook it off, came to her feet with a kip-up, spun off the wall and kept running.  
Idly, She noted the five-inch-deep dent in the forged steel wall.  
She kept running.

At least five hundred meters on either side. A thousand, from end to end—the chamber would have been large enough to house an airfield, and high enough for the planes to get airborne, too.  
The Cheerleader looked around again, peering through the small viewing-window in the chamber door. The gloomy, somber moon shined its corpse-grey beams through the round gap in the roof of the arid space; it played a morbid pattern onto the device that lay below it, in the exact center of the room and the only thing within.  
_At least I won't have to look around for it,_ She thought with a wry sarcasm.  
Briefly, She mourned her missing companion, Ron. Probably He wouldn't have had anything to contribute to the solution less tactical problem; but He would at least have had an appropriately morbid wisecrack to lighten the moment.  
But—especially now—there was not a chance in hell that GJ would have let the mind of Ron, his genius long ago unlocked by repeated exposure to the Attitudinator, savior of the war almost as many times as her, fall into the hands of the enemy. Certainly not for the sake of her amusement.

IIi.  
_Objective, Operation RED QUEEN: to obtain access to a certain enemy-held point. Objective is situated in the center of a circular chamber with radius of approx. 500 meters, and twice that from the floor to the domed ceiling. Area containing multiple ingress/egress points, numerous possible sources of fire, and no cover. Enemies are to be considered, for all intents and purposes, limitless._

III.

The voice of Wade, harkening from deep within the expanses of her memory, came bubbling up in her. _What do YOU do, Kim?_  
But not even Wade would have been sadistic enough to suggest a scenario like this. And if he had, the Cheerleader knew what the correct answer would have been: retreat and wait for GJ reinforcements.  
Reinforcements. Now, _that_ was likely. An airstrike would be nice. Maybe a squadron or two of mounted orbital GJ shock troops. _Why stop there? Let's nuke the place into dirt. Then nuke the dirt._  
She shook herself back to reality. The only thing within a thousand miles of this place was her and the most evil minds on the planet.  
Everybody else had more sense than to approach the home of the most hated people on the planet.  
She slapped herself on the side of the head with her rifle and bodily forced her thoughts back to the situation. Kneeling down wearily, She rested her chin on the butt of her weapon and closed her eyes.  
_What now?_

IV.

**It is a commonly-adopted attitude that it was Kim Possible's ignorance of the tactical situation—primarily, the true disposition and strength of the force arrayed against her—that influenced her actions, and had she known of these things, her decision would have been different.  
This is unlikely. The question was one of mindset, not of odds.** _All Possibilities - The Real War, p. 173_

Had an observer been standing directly in front of the small access door to the Anti-Matter Cannon, they would have observed nothing at all out of the ordinary up until the moment that the cheerleader entered.  
Then, of course, the observer would have died.  
There had never before been documented a horizontal jump that spanned twenty feet. That was acceptable. It only increased her element of surprise when the Cheerleader slammed through the air like a rocket, shattered the tiny observation window, and landed in a long roll two dozen meters into the chamber.

_Must have been rigged analog,_ She thought as She heard the shaped-charge explosives set around the door explode inward, less than a second after her passage but already far too late.  
She jinked left, right, then sectored diagonally across the floor in a smooth motion that covered ten feet in an instant. Then it was pure instinct that made her drop to the floor, and saved her from taking more than a touch of the massive ball of plasma.  
She would never know what made her keep moving, sliding sideways along the ground after She had already dodged—but it saved her life. The cluster of mini-munitions slammed down beside her, and threw her body cart wheeling through the air, eating up the shields on her battle suit with the blast. She lived.  
A slap to her waist activated the one-time shield booster, and a hum emitted from her suit as the battery slung around her hip infused her with power, restoring her protective energy field. The indicator atop the battery ticked down.  
Running purely on secondary senses, her rifle pickled off three, four, five individual shots as if it had a mind of its own. It was only after that She saw what he had shot: three, four, five SpecOps henchmen, they're matte black armor riddled with bleeding holes.  
She sprinted forward, fast enough to elude a stream of plasma rifle fire and to spoof the tracking system of the motion-seeking cannon in the ball turret in the ceiling of the chamber. It whirred around, confused.  
Twisting left, then right, She let two kinetic bursts of power glance off of her at angles. Then She juked right again, barely enough to avoid the triple burst of airborne plasma.  
Spinning around and backpedaling, She snapped off teneleventhirteeneighteentwenty bursts from her modified assault rifle, and twenty-five moving figures took the armor-piercing rounds and died.  
She blinked. Looking around for the first time, She saw her enemy.  
Already there were too many to count; and they were still streaming out from the myriad hatches along the huge walls.  
Spin. Index the shot in less than the time it took for her heart to beat. Break away a clean three-round burst from the hip.  
The rocket—_the rocket? Where did they get rockets?_—was pattered with bullets and detonated in a fiery plume, a dozen feet away and not far enough.  
Her shields diminished to a hair's-breadth, She tapped at the booster-battery again and topped off her energy buffer.  
Running more, in a spectacularly rapid zigzag pattern. Like a hummingbird. They couldn't compensate. The volley of plasma and more antiquated rifle fire, coming now from nearly a hundred individual sources, skipped through the air and missed.  
With a burst of speed, She halved the distance to the center of the room. Her magazine dropped away and was replaced.

Distance, distance!  
She slid under a well-aimed salvo of energy and had enough speed to come back to her feet without stopping. But She stopped regardless, two seconds later—the enemy was getting too eager. She dropped both hands quickly to her belt, primed two grenades, then gave a vicious whirl and flung them. Fast as a darting minnow, She had another two, primed and in the air before the first had hit the ground. Then, without waiting, She kicked up her rifle from where She had dropped it and raked a stream of fire across the approaching mass of her antagonists.  
She turned and was running again. Scarce seconds afterward, the grenades exploded onetwothreefour—  
_kerBLAM!_  
Dozens of separate screams filled the air. The fragmentation grenades that the many fallen henchmen were armed with had detonated into arching spheres of shrapnel.  
Four more feet, and She had reached the device.

It was amazingly innocuous; a rectangular box, less than four feet tall, and shaped as a console. It was mounted on the ground with a large, fluted base. A simple input screen was affixed to the front.  
A harsh pummeling of fire slapped into her from behind. The visual indicator for her shields broke in half.  
She let the force of the blast knock her forward, and She carried it into a roll to absorb the shock. Her hand hovered hesitantly over the activator for the shield booster, and then moved away.  
The console was directly in front of her.  
Suddenly, outrageously careful, She touched one key; another. Tentatively, several in combination.  
Another burst of fire slammed against her. Reflexively, She slipped to the side, crabbing her legs swiftly.  
A white-hot stream of plasma roared into the console, shattering and melting the controls beyond recognition.  
Furious, She bellowed an expletive and leaped over the device, just ahead of a cris-crossing web of fire that screamed out of nowhere, sizzling the air and raising a nerve-splitting _SCREEEE!_ of tortured atmosphere.

--

_Fool, Drakken! Tell your men to watch their fire! The cannon's antimatter loads are bare meters underground!  
It's shielded!  
But the barrel may carry a flash, and it is not. . ._

--

With a whip-crack motion of her arm, She pitched the clip of rifle ammunition into the belly of the man.  
Holding the rifle with in her left hand, She snap-fired a burst, and the clip flared to life with a _crump_. The man staggered back, dropping the glowing plasma staff and holding his stomach.  
A new variety of armored henchmen had begun to surface, among the never-ending swarm of ordinary troops; silvery, with an iridescent sheen; wielding swords and with shields twice as strong as that of the common henchmen. _These must be the elite guards_.  
A ripping plasma streak carved her shields away and seared the reflective coating on her torso black. She fell to a kneel, surrounded by a hail of fire, and wordlessly pounded the flood key for the shield-recharger again. She risked a quick glance at the indicator; a single charge remained.  
Another of the Guards was charging her, tipped with his sword. She faked to the left, then broke right blindingly fast and dropped to one knee, sweeping the Guards's legs away. She followed it up with the butt of her rifle to his neck. Even as its owner did, the sword burst on the ground and died.  
Fast—fast!—She dropped her hands down and spun herself around, planting one leg into the face of the next Guard. Throwing her weight downward She regained her feet, then slammed her body against the man, checking him with her shoulder; he fell backwards with his own sword buried in his chest.  
The Cheerleader danced back once more, barely avoiding the arching reach of a hacking sword. Another swing, and She ducked under it, then—  
—took a heavy jolt of plasma, as a streak of fire burst against her. Her shields disappeared.  
The sword descended upon her with a wicked thrust.  
Close enough to melt tempered iron, her reflexes and training failed her; her life depended on gravity alone as She crumpled limply, falling as fast as She could move. The beam of energy arrowed like a lance a half-inch above her face, and sank two feet deep into the metal console behind her.  
Sparks and flashes, then a tremendous groaning sound began to fill the room.

It was opening.  
The Cheerleader rolled over, panting. The face of every one of the army of henchmen seemed transfixed, staring.  
Slowly, ponderously, the metal convolutions surrounding the box were beginning to unfold. Hinges, revealed, swung creakingly open.  
The console folded away under the floor. Its fluted underpinnings began to iris upward, pressing a huge, ornate, gigantically reinforced column towards the sky.  
And as it passed the Cheerleader, lying on the ground breathing heavily, nobody noticed as She slipped the object off her belt and into the gaping hole in the center of the barrel.  
All eyes were on the device as it slid upward, upward. Towards the round, open gap in the ceiling, where the stars were winking noiselessly.  
Higher and higher it crept.  
Unobserved, the Cheerleader examined her wounds quietly. The entire upper portion of the helmet Wade had custom-made for this mission was fused together; the surface of her faceplate was completely melted. The visor's built-in HUD was going haywire, the mini-pic of Ron in the lower right corner fizzing over with static at irregular intervals. Tiny whirring noises sounded continuously as the on-board computer shorted out and the servos jerked back and forth.  
And the giant, imposing device rose higher.

She considered activating it herself with a grenade, but it wouldn't be necessary. The cannon was obviously beginning a full firing sequence; and the antimatter shells would do far more than She ever could.  
The barrel had, at last, locked into place at its full extension. It was pointed, straight as doom, directly through the wide hole in the roof; pinpricks of light provided a soft counterpoint to its brutal, pitiless shape.  
Loud, crackling sounds fried that air. The energy in the titanic storage banks below the surface of the lair were charging the weapon with enough power to level a world.  
And the air cracked with energy.  
Lying back against the hard metal floor, the Cheerleader relaxed, letting the tension drain from her limbs. It was getting hard to breathe. Probably the near-miss from the plasma sword had enflamed her lungs, filling the bronchial tubes with superheated air. Or maybe the levels of sub-electronic energy that was starting to saturate the chamber were affecting her body.  
It didn't matter.  
Contentedly, She allowed her shields to drain, noticing the sparks that were beginning to touch off between the field and the surrounding air. Reactions, probably.  
It wouldn't make any difference; but She wanted to see the end. Feeling something within her suddenly give way, She gasped; but her suit, like a full-body bandage, held her together.  
Now, so much power had been transferred to the device that motes of dust were being flash-evaporated as they hit it. Long arcs of blue and white energy slanted through the air from the tip of the weapon to the ground. There was very little time left.  
But there was one last thing to do.  
_Let the old fellow come now! He shall find me—_slowly, achingly, She pushed herself to her side, then onto her knees. Drawing on every inch of strength She could muster, She rose, at last, painfully upright. She staggered—_on my feet—_and curled her hand around the grip of her rifle—_sword in hand—_  
Through wracked with pain, She raised the rifle to her shoulder, and gave one final salute to her enemies, now gathered on a balcony above the firing chamber.  
Then, just before She fell, She looked upward at the glowing, radiant streams of energy that were coursing along the weapon, ready to fire, and She smiled.  
For only the second time in her life, Kimberly Anne Possible found peace.  
And then _light—_

V.

**The weapon had, after all, been designed to ravish the planet. The charge of antimatter that was fired weighed in at nearly five tons, and was supercharged to a velocity Very Close to Light (VCL).  
When it collided with the object that had been placed in the barrel, it scarcely mattered that the object was little more than a prototype **_**Erinyes**_** battle suit shield-storage battery (**_see page 592, "Mark 289 Recharger"; also page 867, "The Later Stages of Erinyes"_). **Anything at all would have ruined a firing sequence that was meant to be unobstructed.  
The expected occurred. An explosion of sufficient energy to completely annihilate the Palace lair—and the weapon itself—shook the surrounding regions. It would have been a devastating loss to the Killigan-Drakken-Dementor Combine, even had the energy surge not then flashed down through the chamber of the weapon, setting off the entire magazine of antimatter below the lair.  
GJ global sensors observed the final, cataclysmic blast, and relayed the readings back to headquarters. There, the pictures of the Combine's lair turning into a massive, swirling ball of toxic emissions were broadcasted over the subnet to every home, every school, every base and public gathering place in the Free World.  
An entire way of life rejoiced, even as they mourned the loss of their champion.** _All Possibilities – The Real War, p. 186_


End file.
